Mary Stewart Cutting

“ A crimson wave reached to her black hair; she looked at him with piteous eyes. “He has a mouth like a fish,” she whispered painfully.
“He must be a villain,” said Noël with a cold, unreasoning anger.
She gave him a grateful glance. After a moment’s silence she murmured: “Now you see why I’ve learned to dream into my life. Mrs. Lauter was telling me some things about you, and I thought I’d like you to know some things about myself.”
“I thank you very, very much,” said Noël gently. ”

“ Men with fish-mouths gaped at him from behind every tree!
He held on to the low branch of a cedar and rested his forehead against its trunk. As he lifted his eyes again, a slant of that late afternoon sunshine fell athwart the trail, through which came the figure of Genevieve Deering, her scarlet cloak over one shoulder, slipping between the tree trunks with the light, free step of an Indian maiden, her eager eyes searching into the gloom before them. As she saw him she ran forward. ”

“ Well, if I am married and haven’t the outside things I’ll just dream them into my life—I’ve always done it! There’s only one thing you can’t dream into it—you can’t! And that’s love.”
She rose as she spoke, and stood, her arms hanging down, facing the little circle—then she turned, and disappeared through the trees, as an Indian maiden might. Noël hesitated for an instant, stooped to arrange Mrs. Lauter’s cushions anew for her, and then, jumping up, followed the glint of the scarlet cloak down the trail. ”

“ Lauter had smiled a mutual recognition of the unconscious coupling of some of the others: Birket and Miss Remer—pretty, sensible Ethel Gray and ardent young Porter. With the age of youth, which is far greater than the age of the really old, Noël felt a high, protecting, brotherly pleasure in the contemplation of those who were lovers; it seemed something right, and charming.
“Why, no,” he said aloud in answer to her question. “It is time I heard from them. But summer is a bad season to get a quick decision—so many men are off on vacations. ”

“ There had been the usual summer strain of overwork in the office, with men off on vacations and one, unscheduled, ill. Noël had been too tired to sleep these nights—suffocating nights spent between the two long narrow walls of his room, with heavy wagons hulking over the cobble-stones until the dawn, As he looked at the rejected manuscript on his desk he realized that he had come to the end of his tether for a while. ”

“ Most of the people he knew, more or less, but far down the table beyond the pink glow of the candles the profile of a stranger occasionally gleamed into view—the delicate, spirited profile of a girl, her small head set on a long throat that rose out of a gown cut slightly square at the neck. The outlines of her velvety black hair melted into the velvety black shadows beyond, but he could see the curve of the long lashes on her olive cheek, and the sweetly set, infantine corners of her mouth. ”

“ The effect of this was to give him a painful inner distrust; he felt with sensitively shrinking, unvoiced humility, that there must be some lack in himself, he didn't know what, that made it impossible for a woman to really care for him; he hadn't the power other men have to inspire affection, that was all. Naturally generous and with high ideals, he was growing self-centred from a life that was lonelier than anyone knew. ”

“ To be true to the truth we know of ourselves, in spite of the judgment of the wise—that is a vital attitude, though it may take the loneliest struggle of all to maintain it. The very crucial need of effort now weighted him in the endeavor to stand upright. There are some hurts that drown remembrance, and others that give fresh wounding power to every other hurt that has ever been. He heard those carts hulking over the stones in the long, lonely, hot nights, into the fetid dawn.... ”

“ Lauter sagely.
“Well, you wouldn’t want to marry without it,” said Frances Remer. She looked at Birket with her ironic, dimpling smile. “Honestly, I never could see why it should be considered more interesting to go without things after you are married than before. I’d hate it. if I’m not comfortable I’m downright disagreeable, that’s all—most people are.” ”

“ They’re most of ’em in white,” said Lauter, a jovial, youngish-elderly man, who took a semi-paternal interest in his younger guest. He laid a large, kind hand on Noël’s arm as he spoke. “Been working pretty hard, haven’t you? Well, you wait till you begin to feel the air—that’ll set you up. What girl did you say? Oh, that’s Genevieve Deering—she’s a nice child, but rather impulsive. Come outside and smoke.” ”

“ Porter thinks so, too, and so does Frances Remer.”
“Well, perhaps not,” said Lauter with an easy laugh. “Poor Farington!”
Noël turned and went off into the forest, the enshrouding forest, dark with the weight of centuries, through whose branches the late afternoon sun could hardly penetrate to the thick carpet of pine-needles below. Everything else had failed him—had this failed too? An awful, suffocating doubt clung to him, a devil-tentacled doubt, created by that deadening disbelief of others, from which his soul strove desperately to free itself. If they were right, why, then—! ”

“ Don’t you see?—you can have chairs and tables and clothes and servants, with your sister, or your uncle, or your grandfather—but that isn’t love! Love is when you have to be with a person, no matter what you go without. ”